Playing for England was not a major ambition for me when I was growing up.
My dream was to play for Southampton and as I went to all their games as a kid, the idea that I would one day swap my place in the stands and play for the club seemed a dream too far until it finally happened for me at the start of the 1998-99 season.
Once you start playing regular first team football and rumours start of an England call-up, it does come into your mind but it felt like a big step up from the U21 team to the senior side when my debut came against Holland in Amsterdam in February 2002.
It was only a friendly game, but it was a massive occasion for me and even though I went on to play another 35 times for England, my debut is the night that stands out as the most special of my international career.
Playing for England is the end of a journey in many ways. The ultimate goal for any player and I remember that game in Holland so well, probably because I came off the pitch feeling as if I had made a positive impression and played well. Darius Vassell scored on his debut in that game and it was a very proud night for me and my family.
We had a World Cup Finals on the horizon that year and I was coming into the plans of the manager [Sven-Goran Eriksson] late in the day, but there was a chance there for me to get into the final 23-man squad if I played well in the last few games ahead of the tournament.
In the end, I went to that World Cup and while I knew the only way I could get into the England team was if Ashley Cole got injured or suspended for a game, to have those caps and to say you have played for your country is something no one can ever take away from you.
The big regret, obviously, is that the squads I was a part of did not do better in the tournaments we were involved in and if I knew why the fantastic players we had did not achieve more in World Cup finals and European Championships, I’d probably be England manager now.
From my experience, there was never any big problem among the players in the squad, even though we were rivals with our club sides. Unless you had kicked lumps out of each other the previous weekend, everyone got along fine and wanted to do well for England whenever the squad got together.
Pressure and expectation was there and we were aware of that, but that factor would not have intimidated the quality of the players we had in England squads during the 1990s. They handled all that and more playing for their clubs, but for whatever reason, it didn’t happen for us when the big tournaments came around.
